'I Felt Heard': Catholic School Teacher Recalls Life-Changing Talk With Future Pope

'I Felt Heard': Catholic School Teacher Recalls Life-Changing Talk With Future Pope

Catholic educator Brendan Towell of St. Augustine Preparatory School in Richland, N.J., is seen in this undated image. Towell met the future Pope Leo XIV during a 2010 Augustinian youth retreat, and his formative conversation with then-Father Robert F. Prevost led Towell to publish a reflection on why the Augustinian cleric would be an excellent pope — an article the former Cardinal Prevost read hours before he was elected pontiff May 8, 2025. (…

‘I felt heard’: Catholic school teacher recalls life-changing talk with future pope

(OSV News) — Days before he was elected, Pope Leo XIV (then Cardinal Robert F. Prevost) received a ringing endorsement from a Catholic school teacher in New Jersey — one the pope-to-be apparently read just hours before entering the conclave at which he would be chosen. At the end of April, the Augustinian order’s Province of St. Thomas of Villanova published a reflection by theology instructor Brendan Towell on a life-changing conversation he’d …

Catholic school teacher recalls life-changing talk with future pope

(OSV News) — Days before he was elected, Pope Leo XIV (then Cardinal Robert F. Prevost) received a ringing endorsement from a Catholic school teacher in New Jersey — one the pope-to-be apparently read just hours before entering the conclave at which he would be chosen. At the end of April, the Augustinian order’s Province of St. Thomas of Villanova published a reflection by theology instructor Brendan Towell on a life-changing conversation he’d …